Elliott P. Montgomery and Chris Woebken

The Extrapolation Factory

CLIENT

Self-Initiated

The Extrapolation Factory

The Extrapolation Factory is an imagination-based factory for developing future scenarios, embodied as artifacts for sale in a Brooklyn 99¢ store.

The project is comprised of two parts, a workshop and a pop-up store-exhibition. “Factory workers” translated future forecasts into unique scenarios, each inspiring a future 99¢ store product-concept. Workers fabricated these future products, including packages that revealed its inspiration story and sources that support it.

The products conceived in the workshop were shelved in a Brooklyn 99¢ amidst items already available. Store regulars and invited shoppers strolled the aisles, conversed with strangers, and purchased futures that spoke to them.

JURY COMMENTS

“We liked the move away from self-contained video scenarios to more open-ended participatory futures that include designers, the public and local businesses.

It’s refreshing to see designers not only offering their own visions of the future but also developing new methods and platforms for other people to speculate about futures.

Low-Res Futurism, hacking into an extreme utilitarian outlet such as the 99 cent shop where anything can be found, brings design speculation to the now, showing us how far and how near we actually are from those futures.”

The Extrapolation Factory

1. The Nutshell: In plain language, tell us what your project is, what it does, and what it’s comprised of.

The Extrapolation Factory is an imagination-based factory for developing future scenarios, embodied as artifacts for sale in a Brooklyn 99¢ store.

The project is comprised of two parts, a workshop and a pop-up store-exhibition. “Factory workers” translated future forecasts into unique scenarios, each inspiring a future 99¢ store product-concept. Workers fabricated these future products, including packages that revealed its inspiration story and sources that support it.

The products conceived in the workshop were shelved in a Brooklyn 99¢ amidst items already available. Store regulars and invited shoppers strolled the aisles, conversed with strangers, and purchased futures that spoke to them.

2. The Brief: Summarize the problem you set out to solve. What was the context for the project, and what was the challenge posed to you?

This self-initiated project intends to propose a method for thinking about the future with a broader range of people, mixing experts and laypeople, and doing it in highly accessible ways. Critical future forecasting is often left to academics or specialists, but we believe the practice of imagining our futures can be valuable to non-experts as well. In both parts of this experiment, (the workshop and the store) we’re researching methods for facilitating this thinking, and looking for interesting outcomes that might not emerge from purely expert perspectives.

One interesting example of a lay-person’s perspective was a concept called “Perform-Air.” The creator of this future-product imagined it might be bought and used illicitly to hack a self-driving car’s built-in breathalyzer equipment by capturing the driver’s breath before he’s had a few drinks. What we love about this idea is the cultural complexity it alludes to - a technosphere of preventative measures that might still be hackable with low-tech means, a business model which intentionally makes products to be misused, and a society with recalibrated values, ignoring drunk “driving” offences.

(Inspired by two forecasts: Jayne O’Donnell in USA Today - Alcohol-detection devices that prevent a vehicle from starting if the driver fails a breathalyzer test could become a standard option for every U.S. automobile. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/autos/2006-04-24-breathalyzer-usat_x.htm
and Larry Burns, GM's vice president for research and development - Self-driving cars are commercially available - http://www.nbcnews.com/id/22529906/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/t/gm-researching-driverless-cars )

3. The Intent: What point of view did you bring to the project, and were there additional criteria that you added to the brief?

Over the course of the project, we developed techniques for rapid productization and contextualization that enhanced the overall outcome.

Rapid productization:
We both value the potential of tangible artifacts to represent future and fictional concepts. We wanted to learn how participants would reconsider their own notions of the future once they’d made a tangible and realistic-looking product and held it in their hands. Workers used our productization station to go from future-concept to product, using an array of modeling supplies, packaging enclosures, and a custom branding/packaging kit. Participants told us that this development process helped them imagine a much more colorful, illustrative view of possible futures.

Contextualization:
Through this project, we tested an approach for contextualizing future artifacts in a store environment, where customers expect products to be commercially-produced items that may suit their needs or desires. Anytime we consider a purchase, we take a moment to evaluate what’s before us. Our goal was to help shoppers envision use-cases afforded by a future product as they might already do with a current product, and thereby compel them to inadvertently envision a future scenario in a realistic manner. Throughout the event, shoppers in the store told us about their experiences. We heard a number of reactions to the products, but also to the 99¢ store context. When people purchased the future products, they were already in evaluative mindframes, but then applied this evaluative attention to the future scenario, and thereby evaluated the desirability of the future scenario to a degree.

A novel methodology, strong partnerships and site-specific research gave this project a grounded footing to build on.

First, we wanted to develop a hybrid futuring model, in which participants interject their own creative vision, but use studied sources to support their thinking. In order to do this, workshop participants begin their trajectory by exploring a database of forecasts culled from a variety of sources; professional futurists as well as topical experts. In order to help participants extrapolate individual database forecasts into their own imagined views of future scenarios, we asked them to categorize their selected forecast within five impact-lenses: social, technological, economic, political and ecological. By layering multiple forecasts using these lenses, we hoped participants would be more likely to compile a specific vision of the future, simultaneously nuanced by several characteristics. We asked workers to extrapolate their future visions into “day-in-the-life” stories, and then imagine a physical artifact from that story. Participants told us that this process helped them seamlessly go from abstract forecasts to specific visions.

We developed our future methodology with the ongoing support, dialogue and expert consultation of futurist Stuart Candy. Via email and video-conferencing, Stuart gave us feedback on our methodology, suggestions for engagement, and references to precedent research in this field.

Our second (less traditional) partnership for this project was the one we established with the owners of the 99¢ store. Connecting to a family run pharmacy and 99¢ store in the heart of downtown Brooklyn was challenging and rewarding; doing so pushed us to consider the broad, public impact of our work more deeply than we ever would have in a studio setting. We spent countless hours with the owners building trust in one-another, discussing our ideas, and figuring out how to equally benefit both parties despite our very different interests and expectations of the work.

We also spent a great deal of time immersing ourselves in the local culture of the neighborhood, observing, documenting and experiencing street phenomenon that was unfamiliar to us, but highly characteristic of the neighborhood. We learned a great deal about the community along with the surrounding businesses and amenities, and showed our documentation in the workshop as a way to frame the output.

5. The Value: How does your project earn its keep in the world? What is its value? What is its impact? (Social, educational, economic, paradigm-shifting, sustainable, environmental, cultural, gladdening, etc.)

This project is an attempt to democratize futuring and enable lay-people to enter an intellectual realm that’s frequently dominated by experts and academics. We’re attempting to use design and physical artifacts as accessible languages for people to approach, process and discuss their own ideas on the future.

Our studio sits within a former bank building on Flatbush Avenue in downtown Brooklyn. In this vibrant neighborhood, you can find plenty of 99¢ stores as well as pseudo-science street prosthelytizer carts, custom fragrance shops, psychic readings, gold dental caps, "100% virgin human hair" and shrinkwrapped sneakers. Many of the shops and services in our neighborhood almost feel like they're from the future, but the social symbolism and implications of these phenomena are rarely considered.

Why a 99¢ store? In a 99¢ store, you can find items as contemporary as an iPhone 5 case sitting next to a dated VHS labeling kit, down the aisle from a timeless box of toothpicks. In this chronological blur, it almost feels plausible to find future artifacts as well. When a shopper spots a product like a “Home Transplant Kit” in the store’s medical department, there’s a fantastic moment where connections are made that would never occur in a more clinical setting.